“No, man.” Kareem gave a shifty grin. “This is my survival gear. Ain’t no electricity where I’m going.”
“Where’s that, exactly?”
“Silvergalde, man. I’m gonna live with the elves, me and my girl. They’ll protect their own planet from the Primes. This fucking government won’t, we haven’t even got a force field to cover Darklake City.”
“Right.” People like Kareem were getting wider coverage in the media recently. It was hyped as the Exodus by excitable reporters, though the actual numbers were so small governments didn’t even register them, no more than a few thousand from each planet, and most of them first-lifers. But together there were enough for CST to have to triple the number of trains running to Silvergalde. “What about the navy?”
“Ha! What, like both ships? Fat lot of fucking use they’re gonna be when Hell’s Gateway blows open above Earth, and ten thousand flying saucers carry the demons down to massacre us. They don’t call the giant wormhole that for no reason, you know. Johansson’s Guardians are right, we’re in deep shit, and our corrupt politicians don’t help.”
Coincidence, Hoshe told himself sternly, though it was an unsettling one. “Okay, so are you leaving tonight, or can you help me out?”
Kareem waved a hand at the crates. “I haven’t got everything yet. There’s a lot of medicine and shit I need. Books, too. The paper ones are hard to get hold of these days, and expensive. Did you know Ozzie’s got a library of all human knowledge printed out and stashed away somewhere on his own planet? That’s one guy who’s ready for the apocalypse.”
“So you can help, then?”
“Depends what you want, man.”
“Giscard told me you’re the man to come to for software fixes.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I know some moves. Place I work at, we got us some private teams for solving private problems, you catch?”
“Caught. I’m paying too much tax.”
“Ho, brother, we all do.”
“I own a company that imports spare parts for the auto trade, and the government is killing me for it. I’m just trying to earn a living, feed my family, but those bastards…”
“Yeah, right!”
“What I need is a fix that covers over some of my trading. If I could just shift ten or fifteen percent of my stock without them penalizing me for it I can keep afloat. What I need is some safe encryption that can resist the Revenue Department’s audit engines so I can run the money through offworld accounts.”
“Sure, I can do that. Hell, I don’t even need to bring the guys in. What accountancy software are you using?”
Hoshe held up a memory crystal disk. “System and network is all in here.”
“Excellent. A man who is prepared, I respect that.” Kareem took the memory crystal and smiled. “That’ll be a grand for a full fix, payable in advance.”
“Two hundred now.” Hoshe slapped the notes into his hand on top of the crystal. “The rest when the installed fix is running.”
“Okay, man, I’m cool with that.” The notes were shoved into the back pocket of his jeans. “Must be my lucky week. This is the second private contract I’ve had.”
“Oh, really?”
…
To the Commonwealth’s general public, it was as if their new navy appeared by magic. One day President Doi announced its formation, and within a week it had become a physical reality. Ships were already being put together over at High Angel; planetary security teams started assembling wormhole detectors on the worlds closest to the Prime threat. Things were safely under control. Even Alessandra Baron was moderately complimentary on her show, though possible tax raises received a detailed analysis.
Admiral Kime was surprised by how smoothly the transition went. Of course, it helped that the personnel and equipment from Anshun had all been transferred to High Angel while he was flying the scouting mission to the Dyson Pair. That left him free to concentrate his staff on the huge expansion of capacity and capability that turning the Agency into the navy entailed. In fact, precisely the kind of large-scale managerial role that had taken up ninety percent of his adult life.
Navy Base One was primarily a cluster of freeflying starship assembly platforms holding station thirty to forty kilometers away from the High Angel in their own little archipelago. They’d kept the basic malmetal globe design used above Anshun; although these didn’t have a wormhole connection. A fleet of new cargo shuttles swarmed between them and the vastly expanded and upgraded wormhole station linked to Kerensk, ferrying out the components that would form the next generation of starships. Passenger commuters carried the freefall workforce between the assembly platforms and High Angel, where they’d taken over a considerable portion of the freshly grown Babuyan Atoll dome. The dome’s young buildings were also where Kime had set up his office along with the major part of the navy’s administration, design teams, crew training facilities, and research bureaus. At the center of the parkland campus was a thirty-story tower that had five concave-curving sides surrounded by a DNA helix of skyway rails—dubbed Pentagon II by Alessandra Baron, a name that was catching on rapidly among the media shows and reporters.
Wilson’s office was on the top floor. He didn’t like it. While he was away on the scout mission, the designer had gone for a retro-modern image: slick flow-curving furniture of white tragwood from Niska, monochrome illumination floors and walls. It was like working in an operating theater. The one redeeming feature was the view it gave him out over the compact ecology of his new domain. Only a third of Babuyan Atoll had any urban structures, the rest was burgeoning parkland, with saplings and young bushes pushing up eagerly through the lush grass. Between the paths and lakes were flat patches resembling pearl-textured concrete, which would one day grow into buildings. He enjoyed the panorama, not least for the nightly sight of Icalanise and its fast-moving bands of tawny cloud as it drifted high above the dome’s crystal. It was surprising just how much the last few years had rekindled his old first-life wanderlust. Every time he looked out and saw the exotic gas giant he was less sure he could ever go back to his old job at Farndale.
Anna was first into the conference meeting that was scheduled to draw up the navy’s rules of engagement, but then she had the shortest distance to travel. With her promotion to lieutenant commander, and her position as his chief staff officer, she had the office next door, where she organized his days and acted as a filter against everyone who wanted his personal attention directed to their own particular project or cause. She came in with Oscar; Wilson heard them laugh together as they came through the door.
“Kantil’s commuter shuttle docked a few minutes ago,” Anna told him. “She’ll be up here soon.”
“Right.” He canceled the data filling his virtual vision. She smiled warmly at him, which he returned. Her engagement ring shone brightly as she waved her hand teasingly at him. He’d proposed as the Conway docked. She’d said yes. Oscar said about time. They still hadn’t set a date for the actual ceremony, a classic case of work pressure, although they had taken a lavish apartment together in a block near the edge of the dome.
Rafael Columbia arrived, dressed immaculately in his black uniform. He quickly asked if they’d set a date yet. “My own engagement record was fifteen years,” he said. “I’m sure you can beat that if you set your minds to it.”
Wilson gave him a martyred smile. The lack of a firm date was turning into a standing joke around Base One.